I was horrified by how much I could identify with Raskolnikov’s whiney self-justification—clearly there was a warning here. Raskolnikov led me to the Karamazov brothers, who were in the same part of the bookstore as Ishmael and Queequeg, who were pushed up on the shelves next to Winston Smith, Jem Finch, Joseph K, Mr. Scrooge, and Dracula. My education continued, haphazard and informal, American, European, and Russian authors all mixed together with no regard to any syllabus or any geographical or historical time frame.
